NIEMAN

Nieman stood leaning over the main ship's console, the sharp lines of

its blues, greens and whites reflected in his face. His lean, strong

body was wrapped in celluloid black. The face too was hard and sharp,

aged beyond illusion but not desire, eyes taut like those of a man with

a squadron behind him and no fear of death ahead, but only a smoldering

anger that had displaced all other emotion. And emptiness. A fleet of

robot ships---that was enough.

Omega V was gone. Without reason, without warning, an entire system.

A synthetic sun that was supposed to last a billion years. While he

was away fighting for the lives of others..... He had never trusted

the Guardians, though the soft and protected Commonwealth did; and now

he would ram it down their throats. Spirit beings! The space they

occupied was real enough---the silver threads like a massive,

geometrical spider's web encircling the Hole in Space, the white globes

pulsing across them. Hole in Space. That was what THEY called it. An

immense dark clot in the sky, so black, with no stars behind it. He

would see how untouchable they were.

His hatred had had four long years to smolder. The year of isolation

had been longest, training himself to feel nothing, in the face of

danger. Even the fourteen odd months of pirating had crawled---the

killing of his crew had been a sad necessity. Then the slow,

meticulous construction of the fleet. Human minds were worthless here;

they would only be read and turned to jelly with strange fears and

false images. Only a close-knit, automatic response to telepathic

command, forty fast-black robot ships, were of any use. Why he had

chosen black he couldn't say, unless perhaps it was a gut feeling they

didn't like it. But the Hole was black..... STOP THESE USELESS

THOUGHTS! NEXT YOU'LL BE THINKING OF MARIA.

It was not possible they weren't aware of his opposition. But they

seemed to allow such things. . .or perhaps they couldn't stop them.

No, that was too much to ask himself to believe. Certainly no one had

stopped the fascist uprising, the snowballing of events which had led

to interworld war, the slaughter, the death camps. True the

Commonwealth had eventually come to grips. But the destruction, the

loss of life, could never be justified. So much for Divine

intervention.

He had to start closing down his mind, as he had taught himself through

the years of emptiness. He wasn't sure how greatly distance mattered,

but he was getting close. Already the shimmering outline could be seen

on the monitor, the bright specks of racing white. From here the

blackness beyond did not seem so dark. But soon it would be Darkness

itself, enveloping the sky. It was for the heart of the blackness he

aimed. Perhaps it was their only vulnerable point, they guarded it so

well. He looked up at the wide portal, and as he expected the visions

had begun. A long chute, a cylindrical spiraling of gray and glossy

skulls.

He looked away, then remembered. Shook his head sardonically and

tightened his face. The images weren't outside, they were inside. He

stood atop a geyser of emerald fire. But they couldn't stop his

thoughts. "Central computer, phase three," he just managed. Now

unless his commands were coded and specific the ships would not

respond. He felt his own surge forward, felt the sharp jolt of

electric current as for a moment his wired throat cleared the images

away.

"Bastards!" He could see them now, closer, breaking away from the

strands and coming at him like miniature suns. He felt them probing

the mechanized brain. "One-nine three-nine!" And the unreal minds all

functioned in a different key. He managed to fire three burst from the

left wing before his fingers turned to lizards and were gone.

"AAHH!" Another shock, stronger, and he could see again. He was

closer still, the web becoming an expanding grid pocked with dark and

geometric holes. His ships crossed and interwove, fired a massive

burst. The globes hovered and sometimes blinded him with light, but

either could not or would not attack the ships. Their shields were up,

but how much that mattered.....

Then his fleet was gone, as if it had never been, and the globes

receded. A harder jolt, but somehow he knew this was no illusion. All

false images faded. He was himself, without pain, in his own vessel.

And the grid was still larger, the growing blackness like wet and

physical night behind it.

His hands were back on the console and he fired seven bursts,

at the racing globes or at the shafts themselves. But each time he

fired into nothingness: the lines of brilliance were no longer there.

Above, to the side, but not there. And this too was no illusion. He

hurled his rage at nothing and no one.

Suddenly a huge black hexagon was before him.

Fear.

His mind began to signal reverse thrust, and only a supreme effort of

will overrode it. The blackness he headed toward..... Why did it

terrify him so? It was as Fear itself. And suddenly the looming shaft

above him appeared not as a barrier, but as the strand of a protective

net which covered a great abyss, a hole in living Space. And he was

falling through.

"No!" He could not turn back now! This was why he had come. He would

destroy them. Somehow! This had to be the key. But they no longer

seemed an enemy and this silent, screaming void was no friend. Was it

yet too late.....

"NO!" He was inside.

*

It was cold in that place, through the ship and through the celluloid,

and the last thing he saw as he looked back through the monitor was a

tightening circle of black, like a swirl of inky cloud, enveloping the

Guardians' web.

Then all was dark, but for a sickly and sporadic flashing of the

console. He felt a kind of dull dread, a physical weakness, but not

yet fear. He had pierced all barriers, and stood at the heart of the

nightmare.

Only he could not remember why he had come. No, he remembered. But it

did not seem like much of a reason. "Guardians!" His rage would not

fire in that place, and the screaming hurt his throat. As the silence

hurt his ears.

The ship's momentum had begun to deteriorate, as if such principles did

not apply here. This did not startle him. It seemed almost doubly

familiar. But then the outer hull began to deteriorate as well---he

could feel it. "It isn't possible." The shields were down, this he

knew, but the vessel's outer skin was of pure platinated osmodidium,

seven times descended from stainless steel. It resisted heat,

friction, impact and atmosphere. But in that cold wet nothing it

tinged and flaked as if with rust, was pocked and threw out buds like a

face torn by a shotgun. It broke down, came apart, and fell away all

around him, leaving him naked and without a ship.

He stood alone in the black without protection. The celluloid and

wires were all that remained---why he couldn't say. For a time his

body was suspended, and his feet danced like those of a marionette

trying to find the stage. Then they touched bottom on something very

hard and smooth. A wide stair. He began to feel suffocated, knew

there was no oxygen but this wasn't why. He took a step forward, up

another, and the feeling eased, if only slightly. He was as a shark

that could never sleep. Unless it kept moving, he would die.

He continued to climb, as the steps got steeper, which was very soon.

They were taller, progressing, and he labored on and it was harder and

harder to breathe. Finally the stairs were eight feet high and he

could go no further. He was almost weeping, feeling lost, when he went

to lean against the obstructing wall before him. But it was gone, and

he fell forward into grey mists.

He stumbled to the rocky ground---the rocks were red---and he found

himself in a deep chasm lit and shadowed by a pale sun in a purple sky.

Looking up he saw an ancient and abandoned stone fortress upon the

heights to his left, with tattered streams of white flying distended

circles about it and a sound like the wind wailing but there was no

wind. The air was thin and weak.

He suddenly felt exposed there, and sought shelter from the wraiths

above among the overhung shadows of the left-hand wall. He hunched to

a leaning sit and tried to think very carefully.

He understood. This was his past, and he knew what must be done. A

beautiful and wistful woman was imprisoned there, in that place, and he

would have her as his own at all costs. And for the first time he felt

his aggression not as a flaw, a defense against the void, but as a

rightness and a strength, because he knew she needed him. So he stayed

very still and waited for the darkness of night. Not that this would

blind their sight but because he felt safer in the dark, though not the

black. So as the sky lost red and reached its deepest blue, he set out.

He moved out from the overhang to a narrow vertical slit, a long scar

in the rockface. He climbed slowly and determinedly, sure of each step

and never making a sound. He reached and sweated and pulled, till he

was nearly halfway up.

Then suddenly the wraiths were aware of him and streaked down from the

high walls with a shrieking wail that was horrible to hear. They

reached him, swirled about him and gnashed their sharp teeth from

mouths that were like bats' mouths and screamed their terrible scream.

He reached with one arm to ward them off, nearly fell. He found his

grip and seized a stone and hurled it at the nearest. It went clean

through, and he nearly fell again.

But then, as he hung by one hand, vulnerable, the screaming increased

and they came closer but did not finish him. Then he realized that

they could not. They were as fear, and could not physically harm him,

but only make him do the things to harm himself. So he cautiously

recovered himself, stood firmly on the tiny ledge, and put them from

his mind. There might be other obstacles to reach her, but these he

would not fear.

He reached up and continued to climb as the noise died away and only a

ghost image of the wraiths remained frozen in the air. Climbing

steadily, he had almost reached a level with the first buttress---one

last knot of stone---when a low studded door burst open from the

darkness of the wall to the extreme right, and four black wolves poured

out and rushed headlong toward the place where he would emerge above

the cliffs, and he was hard pressed to reach it before they did.

These were no illusion. He leapt to his feet and pulled the long knife

from its sheath as the first was upon him. One back-slash with the

blade as he dropped to a knee and it fell dying before him, its throat

cut. The others closed as he rose again and they snarled and tore as

he kicked and slashed, and after a time two more were dead but his legs

were badly marked and it was hard to stand, and he fell to the ground.

Then the last, the largest, which had bided its time was upon him,

going for his throat. The knife had fallen away and he reached up with

his hands to grab it around the neck and try to pull it off. He

succeeded partially, raising himself halfway; but it was soon at him

again, tearing at the side of his face. Driven by an overpowering

rage, he seized it just below the ear and dragged it away until he had

its neck firmly in his two hands, and squeezed and kicked until the

wolf moved no more. He let it fall to the ground as he rose, and

sullenly brushed the dirt from him and strained his eyes to focus on

the dark castle before him.

There was only one entrance, near to the small door which had emitted

the wolves, locked tight upon their demise. There it was: a vast arch

guarded by a spiked portcullis. To his amazement as he came forward he

saw that the grid was raised, the way open.

He stepped toward it cautiously, came to it, looked about him for some

kind of trap. But he found none, passed through and entered a long

corridor, which led in time to a double-door upon his right. He

entered a broad chamber of half-light, knowing he had reached the heart

of the Castle. He entered.

A lone figure sat in a heavy throne at its head, a circled fire to one

side, an enormous leopard chained to an iron ring on the other. Six

doors stood silent at the back of the chamber.

"Hello Nieman," said the bald figure from its throne. The firelight

distorted his features, but the fat and sneering visage would have been

ugly in any light. He wore a mantle of crimson, edged in gold.

"Where is she?" he demanded.

"Not so fast," spoke the other calmly. "I am not a person to offend."

"I'm not afraid of you."

The mouth gave a dry, humorless laugh. "Do you know who I am?" He

twisted a ring around his fat finger with the opposite hand.

"I know what you're called," retorted Nieman, his anger growing. "The

ancients called you daemon. Religious fools say you're the Devil."

"And what do you say?" It turned the ring more quickly.

"That you don't exist. I am talking to myself." He looked to the row

of doors, tried to feel her presence among the stone. He stepped

toward the second in line.

"Stop!" cried the visage, which he ignored. He pulled open the door as

the great cat broke free of its chains and came after him. It rushed

and leapt full in his face. But he had turned; he caught it in mid-air

and hurled it against the wall. It gave a cry of pain and alarm,

crashed to the floor senseless, where he left it. He was tired of

killing.

"Fool!" cried the god. "Do you still doubt me?"

"The servant is real but the master a dream." He paid no further

attention as the visage dissolved into excrement. But the fire

remained.

The way before him was too dark to see, so he went back to the entrance

and pulled a torch from its mount just inside the arch. He returned to

the door, and looked inside.

He entered a shallow stone hallway which ended in a tight spiral of

stairs, leading downward. His torch was the only light. He descended

slowly, the way cramped and his legs tight and bleeding, and after

perhaps three hundred steps came upon a long catacomb, which he entered

from a recessed hole in its side. The way was thick with webs which he

brushed aside with is free hand, as he stepped out silently into the

endless row of tombs.

She had to be there, somewhere: the way the shadows played upon the

walls, the branching crypts and long row of stone caskets. The way his

shadow-self stalked behind him, so tall.

He walked a long way, silent but for the sounds of his moving, then

heard something like a faint groan of pain, unmistakably feminine, to

his left and a short way ahead. He moved towards it, thrust the torch

ahead of him and into a high, wide antechamber like a small cathedral,

several caskets deep. He heard the sound again, this time a cry of

terror and alarm, and strained his eyes to see. He moved closer,

wedged the torch between two caskets and looked to the front of the

chamber.

And there she was, the love of his life: above an altar, mounted

halfway up the wall behind it, spread like a crucifix, arms and legs

bound by iron shackles, garment torn, a hideous mask covering her face

and spreading out in huge lizard's fins an arm's length wide. Only her

eyes were visible, wide with terror, pleading against the act sure to

come.

"Please, no. No. . .God. Please, I beg you. Please." And she lost

all control and wept bitterly. He lowered his head, his heart torn

apart.

"Don't cry, I won't hurt you." He stumbled for words, inadequate. "I

haven't come to hurt you, I swear it..... By everything that is and

isn't sacred I make this vow: that I will be to you whatever you need

me to be, that I will never leave you, and that the day I knowingly

cause you pain I will be the instrument of my own destruction. Please,

don't cry."

He felt the tears pushing at his eyes, but would not leave her there a

moment longer. He shook off emotion, climbed onto the altar and lifted

the heavy mask from its hook above her head, set it quietly beside him.

Her deep, gentle face looked out at him with disbelieving gratitude and

love. It was cut in several places from the short spikes which lined

the inside of the mask; but as she had remained very still the damage

was not deep. He found an iron bar leaned against the ground,

remounted the altar and began to pry away the rusted bands. It was not

possible to do so without hurting her, but she bit her lip and endured

the pain.

And as the last shackle came off her wrist she slid into his arms. And

suddenly she knew him, and trusted him, and he embraced her heavily,

weeping. She returned the affection weakly, touching the back of his

neck with her fingers. He had never felt this way, nor ever thought he

could. The tears would not stop.

"I'm so glad I found you," he stammered. "Dear God, I'm glad. What

if..... What if I had never found you?" He stepped back, and an

incomprehensible horror engulfed him.

The words echoed all around him, down the row of tombs, endless.

"Never found you. Never found you. Never found....." And with a

sudden fearful burst like the realization of death, he remembered.

Remembered where he was, and understood. Dear God, he understood.

She slipped back out of his grasp as darkness poured into the room.

Like reverse action she was back upon the wall, the iron hoops

replacing themselves. The mask was up and she was crying. Her blood

flowed gently down the spikes.

"NO!"

But the room began to spin, to break into fragments, and she was gone.

He floated again in the cold wet nothing, the world without order or

hope. He shrank into a weeping ball and clutched his head with his

hands, lost as he had never been lost.

But then to his bewilderment, he began to feel a weight of substance

around him, a materializing structure: his ship was coming back. A

floor, walls, then the hull returned, and he knelt in the familiar

control room, looking up at the monitor. The inky black was patching,

broke, and he could see the outline of a vast web. This time he did

not fight as the ship drew closer, and closer still. A great silver

shaft was above him. . .and he emerged once more into the present,

living, and unchangeable world.

*

At a distance of two hundred miles he turned his ship around, back to

face the Guardians. There the vessel stood still in Space, as a single

globe approached him from out of the glowing network. It came very

close, filling all the screen, but was silent. Thinking it a

messenger, he addressed it with words.

"All right," he said, broken at the last. "All right, you helped me

find her. The one miracle of my life. I am grateful." The white

sphere did not react. "But if you have that power, then you could have

saved her life..... No. I left her." The realization staggered him.

"I..... But now I have learned. I respect you. Bring her back.

Please. . .bring her back." He began to sob without tears.

"PLEASE."

At that moment the sphere glowed with a blinding light. It might have

been an unreadable message. It might have been a warning, or a gesture

of peace. But whatever it was or was not, it remained beyond human

understanding. It could not change the past or help him now.

As the globe receded he turned the ship again, bewildered, and flew

toward unfamiliar stars.